Kill For That
by mattmetzger
Summary: Ianto would kill for just one last moment with Lisa, if only it were possible. Angst, Ianto suffering, oneshot. Possible tissue warning.


**Notes: This is a oneshot to test out an idea for a chaptered story around Ianto and Lisa. Please comment and let me know if I should go on and try out a story as well. Lyrics are from 'Existential on Prom Night' by Straylight Run, which I highly recommend you listen to whilst reading. It can be found on Youtube.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood or 'Existentialism on Prom Night', and I am not making any profit from this work.**

**Kill For That**

_When the sun came up,  
We were sleeping in  
Sunk inside our blankets,  
Sprawled across the bed  
And we were dreaming._

When Ianto wakes in the night, his fingers stretching out for the smiling, laughing, beautiful woman in his dreams, his heart aches and his mind spits in disgust and turns away from the life he leads now. What he leads is a lie when he is confronted with her face again in his dreams, and the real swell of love in his chest.

When he wakes, and her face disappears like a popped bubble, he wants to scream and cry and hurt himself or someone else, just to feel something else than the yawning, gaping hole in his chest. She has taken his heart to the grave as surely as if she had ripped it out herself and walked away.

But this knowledge is worse, because she isn't out there and leading a happy life without him. He could take his shreds of comfort from that, because he loves her _that much_. No, she's dead, and residing in the dark place of non-existence that Suzie and Owen spoke of, that everyone is destined to go.

But she won't be waiting for him, and that knowledge hurts even worse.

He knows that she won't be waiting for him, unmarred and with that beautiful, beautiful smile greeting him like it always used to when he came home from work. And that is the worst part of the knowledge. If he didn't know that, if he didn't know anything, he would have killed himself by now in the off-chance that she _would _be there. If he knew she would be waiting, he would have died the same night that she did.

But he knows she's never coming back, and he will never find her, and something about that cold, lonely knowledge keeps his thoughts and half-formed plans from solidifying and becoming something more productive, more terminal, more...blissful.

_There are moments when,  
When I know it and  
The world revolves around us  
And we're keeping it,  
Keep it all going,  
This delicate balance  
Vulnerable all knowing._

His dreams are blissful. He doesn't dream of her death, or the attack in London, or any other traumatic memory that his job has quickly and generously showered down around him and twisted his psyche beyond all repair.

He dreams, instead, of their little flat in London above a shop that smelled funny, with the stray cat that always rubbed around Lisa's legs and she bitched about it when she was disinfecting the flea bites for the fifteen hundredth time.

He dreams of the time when the heating broke and they curled up under the duvet together and she put her cold feet in his crotch and he's not made such a high-pitched noise since.

He dreams of the time she came back to Wales with him when his Dad was ill in hospital, and the way she'd stared out of the window of the car and commented rudely every time she saw a sheep. And then had pestered him until he told her the Welsh for 'sheep-shagger'.

He dreams of the first time she cut her hair short, and she'd worn it down her back so long that she cried afterwards, but he, the bumbling idiot that he always was around her, had told her she looked even more beautiful with shorter hair and she'd kissed him like the world was ending.

He dreams of the time she'd fended off a waitress who had dared to flirt with him in café by saying, loudly, in front of a lot of eldery patrons, that his ass was hers, and he'd never gone so red in his life, before or since.

He dreams of the little things - the little, happy, tumble-dryer memories that made up a lifetime that seems eons ago now, and completely out of reach.

And then he wakes, and the pain inside grows just a little more each time.

_Sing like you think no one's listening.  
You would kill for this.  
Just a little bit.  
Just a little bit.  
You would, kill for this._

The pain of waking is worth the temporary, blind joy that the dreams gave him, but the following day is never worth it. All the flirting in the world, all the excitement and happy endings in the world: they will never be enough. She is gone, and he feels that so keenly every moment.

It has been almost eighteen months, but he feels like she died yesterday. He still expects to hear her whining, plaintive voice when he doesn't have her usual cappucino with ridiculous amounts of foam on his tray for the next coffee round. He still makes little mental notes of things to tell her when he gets home, and then feels something shift unpleasantly inside when he remembers that she's not at home, she's frozen in a drawer.

And he would exchange everything he has for one last hour with her. One last chance to tell how much he loved her, always loved her, and how hard he tried not to let her die, and how much he's going to miss her. One last kiss, one last glance, one last smile, three last words.

_Sing like you think no one's listening,  
You would kill for this,  
Just a little bit,  
Just a little bit,  
You would, you would..._

He would kill for that, and that is the blind truth. He told Jack, the night she died, that he would watch him suffer and die one day, and he meant it. Under the condition that that death could bring back Lisa.

He knows that if Jack's death - permanent, even - would give him one last moment with Lisa, he would strangle the Captain himself. He would torture him, destroy him, for that chance. And it scares Ianto, but it also comforts him.

He doesn't want to forget how loving Lisa _felt,_ above all.

_Sing me something soft,  
Sad and delicate,  
Or loud and out of key,  
Sing me anything.  
We're glad for what we've got,  
Done with what we've lost,  
Our whole lives laid out right in front of us._

He has a lifetime to go - he's only twenty-five, and by all rights he should go on for a long, long time. But there is the reason that he never left Torchwood after he died. The reason that he never walked away, because, despite what they say, an operative _can _just leave. They're just watched for the rest of their lives.

But he never did.

Because nobody in Torchwood, bar Jack, makes it past forty. He will die young, and he will not have to endure this agonising pain for an entire lifetime. He will not die at ninety in a nursing home, trying desperately to recall her beautiful face beyond the damage of senility. He will die young and strong and sane, with her eyes large and smiling in his mind.

And if he dies seeing her face, Ianto knows that he will die happy.

_Sing like you think no one's listening,  
You would kill for this,  
Just a little bit,  
Just a little bit,  
You would._

So when he wakes from his dreams, he clings to the little traces they leave swimming in his mind. The sound of her voice, the feel of her skin, the soft bubble of her giggles and the firm grasp of her fingers in his. The way her skin glowed in the sun, and the way its warmth radiated through him in bed, no matter what they were doing. The curl of her fingers around his tie, her smooth lips against him, the feel of her smile into his skin.

He has replaced his prayers to a higher power with prayers to her, because it is equally futile, and he whispers little promises in the dark. Things he promised years ago, and things he would kill to be able to deliver on. His future was ripped away, eighteen months ago, and no matter what his Captain promises, and the little temporary refuges he provides, that will not be coming back.

He would kill for what he cannot have.

_Sing like you think no one's listening,  
You would kill for this,  
Just a little bit,  
Just a little bit,  
You would, you would...._

So when he finally cries, silently into his pillow, as he realises he can't quite recall the exact sound of her singing echoing in the kitchen in their London flat, off-key and terrible, but the sweetest sound in the world, he's sure she will forgive him.

_Sing me something soft,  
Sad and delicate,  
Or loud and out of key,  
Sing me anything._


End file.
